Editorial - Accounts Gets Black Marks - ACS Publications - American

Aug 8, 1984 - not letting it go to our head. But the recognition problem is not trivial; we suspect that Accounts and Chemical Communications appear t...
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ACCOUNTS OF CHEXIC’AL RESEARCH” Registered in U S . Patent and Trademark Office;Copyright 1984 by the American Chemical Society

VOLUME 17

NUMBER 8

AUGUST, 1984

EDITOR JOSEPH F. BUNNETT

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Joel E. Keizer John E. McMurry EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Robert Abeles Richard Bernstein R. Stephen Berry Michel Boudart Maurice M. Bursey Marshall Fixman Jenny P. Glusker Kendall N. Houk Keith U. Ingold Jay K. Kochi Maurice M. Kreevoy Theodore Kuwana Ronald N. McElhaney George W. Parshall Kenneth N. Raymond Jacob F. Schaefer Richard C. Schoonmaker Anthony M. Trozzolo

BOOKS AND JOURNALS L!IVI sI oN D. H. Michael Bowen, Director Journals Department: Charles R. Bertsch, Head; Marianne C. Brogan, Associate Head; Mary E. Scanlan, Assistant Manager; Anne C. O’Melia, Assistant Editor Marketing and Sales Department: Claud K. Robinson, Head Production Department: Elmer M. Pusey, Jr., Head Research and Development Department: Lorrin R. Garson, Head The American Chemical Society and its editors assume no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by contributors. Views expressed in the editorials are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the official position of the American Chemical Society. Registered names and trademarks, etc., used in this publication, even without specific indication thereof, are not to be considered unprotected by law.

Accounts Gets Black Marks You can see one now, if you look quickly. It’s there, creeping across the spine of this issue, from front cover to back. Furthermore, if you examine your earlier 1984 issues, you will see that they are similarly infested. If you line up the 1984 issues on a bookshelf, in order from left to right, you will observe that the black marks are slowly crawling up the spine. It looks as though they will reach the top just about December. We think the black marks will help you to keep the issues for any year in proper order on your shelves, and thereby to make your collection of back issues more useful to you than they otherwise would be. The black marks won’t help us personally in that respect, for we have faithfully, year by year, had a local bookbinder bind our annual volumes. (His most recent charge was $12.50 per volume; we think it’s worth the money.) The whole set, 1968 through 1983, takes only 60 cm. (24 inches) of shelf space, a remarkably small commitment of space in view of the treasury of fine chemistry embraced within the set. Pardon us if we wax enthusiastic; we are proud of the many important articles by leading chemists that Accounts has published. Also, we find ourselves often consulting specific articles from earlier years, usually located by means of the quinquennial indexes. Incidentally, the black marks will also help subscribers to distinguish issues of Accounts from those of Chemical Communications. That esteemed British publication began in January, 1983, to appear with a cover color sufficiently similar to ours that one might, upon seeing one issue isolated in a stack of journals, be unable to tell at a glance which journal it represented. Yes, we know about sincere flattery, but we’re not letting it go to our head. But the recognition problem is not trivial; we suspect that Accounts and Chemical Communications appear together on the same table as often as brie and chenin blanc do at political fund-raising parties in Marin County. Thus we think the black marks will be helpful in many ways. They are part of our ongoing efforts, not only to bring readers excellent articles by excellent scientists, but also to make those articles as useful to readers as possible. We hold the issues from earlier years to have value comparable to the most recent, and as mentioned we feel that the black marks w i l l help subscribers who line up their collected issues neatly on the shelf to keep them in order. We realize that other subscribers may wish to use their personal copies of Accounts for current reading purposes only and consult bound volumes in the library for articles that appeared in earlier years. To them we suggest, however, that they be sure the library has a subscription. (Besides, some students may not have personal subscriptions, thinking they cannot afford them, and must rely on the library copies.) Joseph F. Bunnett